James Frank Dobie (1888-1964)

    J. Frank Dobie, folklorist, was born on a ranch in Live Oak County, Texas, on September 26, 1888, the eldest of six children of Richard J. and Ella (Byler) Dobie. His ranching heritage became an early influence on his character and personality. His fundamentalist father read the Bible to Frank and the other five children, and his mother read them Ivanhoe and introduced them to The Scottish Chiefs, Pilgrim's Progress, and Swiss Family Robinson. He left the ranch when he was sixteen and moved to Alice, where he lived with his Dubose grandparents and finished high school. In 1906 he enrolled in Southwestern University in Georgetown, where he met Bertha McKee, whom he married in 1916, and Professor Albert Shipp Pegues, his English teacher, who introduced him to English poetry, particularly the Romantics, and encouraged him as a writer. Dobie's education as a teacher and writer continued after graduation in 1910. He worked two summers as a reporter, first for the San Antonio Express and then the Galveston Tribune. He got his first teaching job in 1910 in Alpine, where he was also the principal, play director, and editor of the school paper.

    He returned to Georgetown in 1911 and taught in the Southwestern University preparatory school until 1913, when he went to Columbia to work on his master's degree. With his new M. A., he joined the University of Texas faculty in 1914. At this time he also joined the Texas Folklore Society. Dobie left the university in 1917 and served for two years in the field artillery in World War I. His outfit was sent overseas right at the war's end, and he returned to be discharged in 1919. In 1919 he published his first articles. He resigned his position at the university in 1920 to manage his uncle Jim Dobie's ranch. During this year on the Rancho de Los Olmos with the vaqueros and the stock and the land that had been part of his formation, Dobie discovered his calling - to transmute all the richness of this life and land and culture into literature. The Texas Folklore Society was the main avenue for his new mission, and the University of Texas library with all its Texas resources was his vehicle. Dobie returned to Austin and the university in 1921. The Texas Folklore Society had been formed in 1909 by Leonidas W. Payne and others, but had recessed during the war years.

    On April 1, 1922, Dobie became secretary of the society and immediately began a publication program. Legends of Texas (1924) carried the seeds of many of his later publications. Dobie served as the society's secretary-editor for twenty-one years and built the society into a permanent professional organization. When the university would not promote him without a Ph.D., Dobie accepted the chairmanship of the English department at Oklahoma A&M, where he stayed from 1923 to 1925. During these two years he began writing for Country Gentleman. With considerable help from his friends on the UT campus, he was able to return in 1925 with a token promotion. He began writing articles on Texas history, culture, and folklore for magazines and periodicals and soon started to work on his first book, A Vaquero of the Brush Country.

    Dobie's purpose in life from the time of his return to the university in 1921 was to show the people of Texas and the Southwest the richness of their culture and their traditions, particularly in their legends. John A. Lomax, another founder of the Texas Folklore Society, had done this with his collecting and publishing cowboy songs; Dobie intended to do this with the tales of old-time Texas and through the publications of the society and his own writing. His Vaquero of the Brush Country, published in 1929, established him as a spokesman of Texas and southwestern culture. It was based on John Young the Vaquero's autobiographical notes and articulated the struggle of the individual against social forces, in this case the battle of the open-range vaquero against barbed wire. Two years later Dobie published Coronado's Children (1931), the tales of those free spirits who abandoned society in the search for gold, lost mines, and various other grails. It won the Literary Guild Award for 1931 and, combined with his continuing success as a popular writer in Country Gentleman, made Dobie a nationally known literary figure. He was also promoted in 1933 to the rank of full professor, the first Texan non-Ph.D. to be so honored at the university. In 1942 he published the Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, an annotated reading list. It was published again in 1952. As head of the Texas Folklore Society and author of On the Open Range (1931), Tales of the Mustang (1936), The Flavor of Texas (1936), Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver (1939), and Tongues of the Monte (1947), Dobie was the state's leading spokesman and literary and cultural figure during the Texas Centennial decade, the 1930s. His first period of writing ended with the publication of The Longhorns in 1941.

    He spent World War II teaching American literature in Cambridge. After the war he returned to Europe to teach in England, Germany, and Austria. He said of his Cambridge experience in A Texan in England that it gave him a broader perspective, that it was his beginning of his acceptance of civilization, an enlightened civilization free of social and political rigidities and with full respect for individuality. In Texas the University of Texas regents, critical of the university's liberal professors, had fired President Homer P. Rainey in November 1944. Dobie, a liberal Democrat, was outraged and vociferous, and Governor Coke Stevenson said that he was a troublemaker and should be summarily dismissed. Dobie's request for a continuation of his leave of absence after his European tour in 1947 was denied by the regents, and he was dismissed from the UT faculty under what became known as the "Dobie rule," which restricted faculty leaves of absence to two years except in emergencies. After this separation Dobie devoted all of his time to writing and anthologizing. The next decade saw the publication of The Voice of the Coyote (1949), The Ben Lilly Legend (1950), The Mustangs (1952), Tales of Old Time Texas (1955), Up the Trail From Texas (1955), and I'll Tell You a Tale (1960). Before he died he published Cow People (1964) and almost finished the manuscript for Rattlesnakes, which Bertha McKee Dobie later edited and published in 1965. Dobie began writing for the Southwest Review in 1919, when it was the Texas Review, and continued the association throughout his life. The Southwest Review published his John C. Duval: First Texas Man of Letters in 1939.

    Dobie also wrote a Sunday newspaper column from 1939 until his death, and as an outspoken critic of the Texas scene he was a popular subject of newspaper stories. His most celebrated targets were professional educationists ("unctuous elaborators of the obvious"); state politicians ("When I get ready to explain homemade fascism in America, I can take my example from the state capitol of Texas"); Pompeo Coppini's Alamo cenotaph ("From a distance it looks like a grain elevator or one of those swimming pool slides"); and inappropriate architecture (a friend reports his saying that the University Tower, into which he refused to move, "looked like a toothpick in a pie, ought to be laid on its side and have galleries put around it"). His war against bragging Texans, political, social, and religious restraints on individual liberty, and the mechanized world's erosion of the human spirit was continual. Dobie died on September 18, 1964. He had been feted by the Southwestern Writers and the Texas Folklore Society. Special editions of the Texas Observer and the Austin American-Statesman had been devoted to his praise by his many admirers, and President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the nation's highest civil award, the Medal of Freedom, on September 14, 1964. His funeral was held in Hogg Auditorium on the UT campus, and he was buried in the State Cemetery. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.918, -097° 43.616

Maurice Cameron "Cam" Hill (1919-1962)

    Cameron Hill was born Maurice Cameron Hill (he later dropped his first name) on February 7, 1919, in Rusk, Texas, to Annie V. and Henry T. Hill. Both parents were music lovers and encouraged their son to sing and play the guitar. The eldest of seven children, Hill began playing when he was nine. By 1930 he was playing guitar and singing on KLUF radio in Galveston; his father accompanied him on mandolin. While still a teenager, Hill joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the mid-1930s and helped build roads and parks in East Texas. His cousin Truman Welch, also a guitarist, also joined the CCC, and together they played music at any venue where they could earn money. Hill and Welch performed with the Vance Brothers in Palestine, and in 1939 they joined Moon Mullican's outfit, the Night Riders. Later, Hill and fiddle player Leo “Micky” Lane moved to Illinois for several months, then returned to Texas and played beer joints with Shelly Lee Alley in Houston.

    In December 1939 Hill joined the Texas Wanderers who were being heard on Houston’s KXYZ radio. His first recordings were with the Texas Wanderers for Decca in April 1940. The band included pianist and singer Moon Mullican. When Mullican left the Texas Wanderers, most of the band, including Hill, left with him and they headed for Beaumont, where they played on KFDM radio as Moon Mullican's Texas Wanderers. When this band broke up in 1941, Hill went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and joined his cousin Truman Welch to work with Pee Wee Roberts & His Skyliners on KTHS radio. In 1942 Hill joined the Village Boys, broadcasting on Houston’s KTRH radio during the day and playing at clubs in the evenings. While in Houston, he met fellow guitarist Jimmy Wyble, and the two became firm friends and headed for the West Coast in 1943. They were strongly influenced by the newly-emerging swing jazz form which gave a voice to the electric guitar, particularly that of Charlie Christian. Hill and Wyble recreated Charlie Christian’s solos, which Hill could play note for note.

    Hill, Wyble, and noted steel guitarist Noel Boggs were playing in a small Los Angeles club where they met pianist Millard Kelso, who was playing with Bob Wills. Kelso suggested that they audition for Wills and set up the meeting. The three played with Wills at the Santa Monica Ballroom. Hill and Wyble made such an impression that they were hired on the spot; Boggs joined shortly after. At the time, Hill and Wyble set the standard for electric twin guitar leads and solos in western swing. From 1944 until 1945, Cameron Hill played and recorded with the Texas Playboys and can be heard on Armed Forces Radio transcriptions. He also worked in movies with Wills, including Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (1944), Rhythm Round-Up (1945), Blazing the Western Trail (1945), and The Lawless Empire (1945).

    In spring 1944 Wills organized his largest band to date, with seventeen instrumentalists and two vocalists. Hill and Wyble were the guitarists. But this version of the Playboys only lasted about six months. While with the Playboys, Hill met and married Wills's first female vocalist, twenty-four-year-old Laura Lee Owens. In December 1945 Hill and Owens left the Playboys and returned to Houston. Cameron joined the military, and Laura joined Dickie McBride's band. In 1946 they were divorced. Hill worked and recorded with Dickie Jones and the Skyliners in Houston, but by 1947 he had moved back to Los Angeles, where he played on Roy Rogers’s recordings of With A Sweep of My Sombrero, Old-Fashioned Cowboy, and Betsy. Hill was then hired by Spade Cooley and reunited with Jimmy Wyble, who was also in the Cooley band. While playing with Cooley in 1948, Hill met vocalist Becky (Mary Ruth) Barfield, who had performed at the Grand Ole Opry and reportedly taught Eddy Arnold how to yodel. Hill and Barfield were married in 1949.

    Bob Wills’s vocalist Tommy Duncan left the Texas Playboys in 1948 and joined forces with his brother, bassist-vocalist Glynn Duncan. They recruited Cameron Hill, Jimmy Wyble, Millard Kelso, Noel Boggs, Joe Holley, and Ocie Stockard to form the Western All Stars. Hill, Wyble and Boggs left the All Stars in July 1949. Hill then worked with his wife in the Wade Ray Band, before moving on to lead his own band, the Texas Sundowners. The Texas Sundowners worked in Los Angeles and made regular trips back to Houston, where Hill, between 1951 and 1954, played recording sessions and worked with local bands. He moved back to Houston in 1954. In May 1955 at ACA Studios in Houston, Hill played on a session with Slim Whitman, which produced the hit, I'll Never Stop Loving You. In 1955 he played on Floyd Tillman’s recording, Baby, I Just Want You, which Hill co-wrote with Tillman.

    Returning to California in 1956, Hill rejoined Wade Ray’s western swing band and played on radio and television and worked in clubs. Becky Hill joined the band some time later. In 1958 Cameron Hill played on what were to be his last recording sessions, with piano player Merrill Moore. These tracks were a mix of light jazz and popular music, recorded for Capitol, and included Music, Music, Music and Back Home in Indiana. Becky Hill passed away in 1958 in California. Hill left the West Coast, returned to Texas, and then went to Las Vegas to work in the Golden Nugget’s house band. He returned to Houston in 1961. In 1962 Hill, dogged by illness, moved in with his sister and brother in-law, Colleen and E.B. Wheeler, in Pasadena. His children, Rebecca and Cameron, went to live with family members in Pearland. Cameron Hill died in Houston, on June 22, 1962. Source

Section 19
Rosewood Funeral Home and Cemetery
Humble

COORDINATES

29° 57.526, -095° 16.110

George Weedon (?-1842)

    George Weedon, Republic of Texas veteran, was born in Virginia, most likely Culpeper County, to Augustine and Elizabeth Farmer Weedon. Both of his grandfathers, George Weedon, for whom he was probably named, and Daniel Farmer, fought in the American Revolutionary War, thus setting an example for their grandson. After moving to Texas in 1835, Weedon followed in his grandfathers' footsteps by joining Texas' fight for independence. He served as a member of Captain William S. Fisher's Company of Velasco Blues, which later became Company I, First Regiment of Texas Volunteers, from April 19 to June 18, 1836, and participated in the battle of San Jacinto, where he was wounded. Because of his service to Texas, Weedon received one-third of a league of land, 1,476.13 acres, in Washington County in 1838, as well as 320 acres for having served in the Texas Army. Two years after being mustered out of the Army, Weedon received another 640 acres for fighting at San Jacinto. On August 2, 1838, he received a league of land, 4,428.4 acres, for being wounded at San Jacinto. The majority of his land holdings were in present day Walker County. Weedon settled in Cincinnati, Texas, which was founded by James DeWitt, also a veteran of San Jacinto. Weedon passed away on January 18, 1842, and was buried on his property. According to his will, Weedon, with no mention of any family, requested that 20 acres of his land be set aside for a church, a cemetery, and a schoolhouse. Weedon's grave was moved from Walker County to the Texas State Cemetery on November 3, 1938.

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.937, -097° 43.637

Carlos Bee (1867-1932)

    Carlos Bee, lawyer, politician, and legislator, the son of Mildred (Tarver) and Hamilton P. Bee, was born on July 8, 1867, at either Saltillo, Coahuila, or Monterrey, Nuevo León. His parents were temporarily residing in Mexico after the collapse of the Confederacy, but they returned to San Antonio, Texas, in 1874. Bee attended San Antonio schools and the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). He studied law while working as a railway mail clerk in the judge advocate's office at Fort Sam Houston, was admitted to the bar in 1893, and began to practice law in San Antonio. For two years he served as United States commissioner for the Western District of Texas, and he was district attorney of the Thirty-seventh District for six years, 1898-1905. He was a member of the Bexar County school board for two years, 1906-08. In 1904 Bee was chairman of the state Democratic convention and a delegate to the national Democratic convention at St. Louis. As a member of the Texas Senate for two terms, 1915-19, he introduced a compulsory school bill and a fifty-four-hour work week for women. He was elected to the Sixty-sixth Congress (1919-21) and subsequently resumed his law practice in San Antonio. Bee married Mary Kyle Burleson of Austin. He died in San Antonio on April 20, 1932, and was buried in the City Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife, Mary Elizabeth. Source

Section 4
Confederate Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.193, -098° 27.806

James Edward "Pa" Ferguson (1871-1944)

    Pa Ferguson, Texas governor, son of James Edward and Fannie (Fitzpatrick) Ferguson, was born on August 31, 1871, near Salado, Bell County, Texas. When he was four years old, his father died. His mother continued to live on the farm, and he began working in the fields as a young boy. He entered Salado College, a local preparatory school, at age twelve but was eventually expelled for disobedience. He left home at sixteen and wandered for two years through the states of the Far West, where he lived by accepting any employment offered. After returning to Bell County, he farmed and worked with a railroad-bridge gang until, after a brief study of law, he was admitted to the bar in 1897 and began the practice of law in Belton. On December 31, 1899, he married Miriam A. Wallace; they had two children. His law practice did not require all of his time, so Ferguson expanded his interests to include real estate and insurance and later turned his attention to banking. He was associated with the Farmers State Bank of Belton for several years and was a member of the Texas Bankers Association. He moved to Temple and in 1907 joined with others in establishing the Temple State Bank. Throughout his years in banking he took an active interest in county and local politics.

    Although he had never held office, he was not a stranger to political problems; he had done much work in keeping local-option prohibition from Bell County, had been one of the Bell County managers in the campaign of Robert L. Henry for Congress in 1902, had helped carry Bell County for Cone Johnson in his contest with Joseph Weldon Bailey in 1908, had served as a campaign manager for Robert V. Davidson in 1910, and had aided Oscar B. Colquitt in his successful gubernatorial campaign (1912). Prohibition was a major issue in the campaign of 1914, with several aspirants for the governorship on both sides of the question. The prohibitionists held an elimination convention and pledged their support to Thomas H. Ball of Houston. The anti-prohibitionists attempted to have a similar convention, but Ferguson, whose statements and Bell County record identified him as an anti-prohibitionist, refused to submit his name to it. As a result it was impossible for the convention to eliminate him and obviously unwise to divide the vote by naming a rival candidate. The convention did not endorse Ferguson, but the other antiprohibition candidates withdrew from the race. Ferguson won the nomination by a majority of about 40,000 votes.

    The campaign proved him to be a man of considerable native ability and the possessor of a captivating personality. As a political speaker he had few equals. The most discussed plank in his platform, which appealed especially to tenant farmers, proposed a law that would limit the rent charged by landlords and prevent the collection of bonuses. Landowners were assured, however, that they need not be alarmed by the proposal, as it would benefit all concerned. During Ferguson's first term, the legislature passed several measures of major importance. The tenant law was passed but remained on the statute books only a short time before being declared unconstitutional. The policy of state aid to rural schools was begun, and a rather timid law requiring compulsory school attendance was passed. Three new normal schools were authorized. Provision was made for the establishment of the Austin State School. Needed buildings were provided at other eleemosynary institutions. The colleges were permitted to begin building programs, and the educational appropriation bills were more generous than usual. As a result of these and other expenditures, the ad valorem tax rate for state purposes advanced from 12½ to 30 cents. The landholdings of the prison system were greatly increased, and because of the rising price of farm commodities, the system became self-sustaining; during the years of war prosperity, it showed a profit.

    In 1916 Ferguson's reelection seemed certain. The prohibitionists passed over their better-known leaders and gave their support to Charles H. Morris of Winnsboro, a political unknown. The issues were prohibition, the tax rate, and certain unpalatable rumors concerning the Ferguson administration. Ferguson was reelected by a majority of about 60,000 votes, but opposition was sufficient to show that many Texans, including a number who were not prohibitionists, were displeased with his stewardship. Aside from the act instituting the highway department, the second Ferguson administration was marked by little in the way of important legislation. The legislature passed generous appropriation bills, and the ad valorem tax rate reached the constitutional maximum of thirty-five cents. Early in his second term the governor became involved in a serious quarrel with the University of Texas. The controversy grew out of the refusal of the board of regents to remove certain faculty members whom the governor found objectionable. When Ferguson found that he could not have his way, he vetoed practically the entire appropriation for the university. The excitement that greeted the veto was soon overshadowed by the greater excitement that surrounded the impeachment trial. While the campaign of 1916 was in progress, the Ferguson administration had been charged with a number of irregularities. Preliminary investigations failed to uncover any charge that would merit impeachment, and for a time the incident seemed closed. The Ferguson controversy with the university brought renewed interest in the old charges, however, and at about the same time a number of new charges were made. On July 21, 1917, in the midst of the excitement, Ferguson appeared before the Travis County grand jury, and several days later it was announced that he had been indicted on nine charges. Seven of the charges related to misapplication of public funds, one to embezzlement, and one to the diversion of a special fund. Ferguson made bond of $13,000 and announced his candidacy for a third term as governor.

    As a result of these developments, the speaker of the House called a special session to consider charges of impeachment against the governor. This call was of doubtful legality, but Ferguson removed all question by calling the legislature to meet for the purpose of making appropriations for the University of Texas. The House immediately turned its attention to the numerous charges against the governor and, after a lengthy investigation, prepared twenty-one articles of impeachment. The Senate, sitting as a High Court of Impeachment, spent three weeks considering the charges and finally convicted the governor on ten of them. Five of the articles sustained by the Senate charged Ferguson with the misapplication of public funds, three related to his quarrel with the University, one declared that he had failed properly to respect and enforce the banking laws of the state, and one charged that he had received $156,500 in currency from a source that he refused to reveal. Nine of the charges can be described as violations of the law, while the obtaining of $156,500 from a secret source was certainly not in keeping with good policy. The Court of Impeachment, by a vote of twenty-five to three, removed Ferguson from office and made him ineligible to hold any office of honor, trust, or profit under the state of Texas. Ferguson declared that the legislature constituted little more than a "kangaroo court," but only a few months before, both the House and the Senate had refused to sustain charges against him, and his removal from office was far from certain when the legislature convened in special session. He resigned his office the day before the judgment was announced and contended that it did not apply to him. The question was eventually carried into the courts, where the judgment of the Court of Impeachment was sustained. But the mere fact that Ferguson had been impeached and made ineligible to hold any office of trust or profit under the state did not in any sense remove him from the field of Texas politics. In 1918 he sought the Democratic party nomination for the governorship but was defeated by William P. Hobby. In 1920 he was an unsuccessful candidate for President on his own American party ticket. In 1922 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate.

    In 1924, unable to run under his own name, he ran his wife's campaign for the governorship against Judge Felix Robertson, the candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. The Fergusons beat Robertson and went to the Governor's Mansion for a third time. Two years later they lost a reelection bid amid new scandals concerning excessive pardons and political patronage abuses. In 1928, for the first time since 1914, Ferguson was not an active participant in a political campaign, but even then he took some interest in the race for the governorship and gave his support to Louis J. Wardlaw. In 1930 he conducted the unsuccessful campaign of his wife for the governorship, and in 1932 he conducted her successful campaign for the same office. In 1940 Mrs. Ferguson again sought the governorship, and for the last time "Farmer Jim" appealed to the voters of Texas. He was by this time an old man. He made only a few speeches and must have known long before the votes were cast that Mrs. Ferguson had no chance to win. James Ferguson died on September 21, 1944, and was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.920, -097° 43.621

William Vannoy Criswell (1815-1858)

    William Criswell, Republic of Texas Veteran, was born on April 16, 1815, in Knox County, Kentucky to John Yancy Criswell, Sr. and Mary Eleanor Vannoy. At the age of 14 he moved to Texas and settled in or around Bastrop in February 1830. During Texas' fight for independence, Criswell joined Jesse Billingsley's Mina Volunteers, which became Company C of the 1st Regiment of the Texas Volunteers, which in turn fought at the Battle of San Jacinto. Because of his service to Texas, Criswell received one-third of a league of land by the Fayette County Board on January 5, 1838. On February 7, 1840, he received 640 acres of land for taking part in the Battle of San Jacinto. He later received another 3,250 acres of land for serving in the army from September 28 to December 13, 1835, and another 320 acres for his service from March 27 to June 27, 1836. On February 3, 1842, Criswell married Mary "Polly" E. Michin (McMicken) in La Grange. Together, they had six children: Bettie, Sallie E., Mollie, John H., James Yancy, and Lillie. Criswell, a member of the Lyons Masonic Lodge # 195, died on January 19, 1858, and was buried on the Kubena farm one mile south of Praha, Texas. During Texas' centennial celebration, Criswell's body was moved to the Texas State Cemetery. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.919, -097° 43.649

Anthony Martin Branch (1823-1867)

    Anthony Martin Branch, Confederate congressman, was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, on July 16, 1823, one of ten children of Winnifred (Guerrant) and Samuel Branch III. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1842 and in 1847 moved to Huntsville, Texas, where he formed a law partnership with Henderson Yoakum and became closely associated with Sam Houston. (When Houston died Branch served as executor of his will and guardian of his children.) On March 18, 1849, Branch married Amanda Smith. In 1850 he was elected district attorney of the Seventh Judicial District. In 1859 he represented his district in the House of Representatives of the Eighth Texas Legislature, where, according to a contemporary biographer, he "well sustained his reputation for eloquence and ability." 

    In November 1861 he was elected as a Democrat to the state Senate. Although a Unionist, he resigned from the Senate and on March 20, 1862, enlisted in the Confederate Army. A month later he was elected captain of Company A in Col. George Washington Carter's Twenty-first Texas Cavalry. On August 3, 1863, Branch defeated Peter W. Gray in the race to represent the Third District of Texas in the Second Confederate Congress. In Richmond he served as a member of the Elections, Military Affairs, and Territories and Public Lands committees and was vitally interested in the exportation of cotton through Mexican ports. Although a staunch political ally of President Jefferson Davis, Branch was an uncompromising exponent of states' rights. As such he fought to keep Texas troops in Texas and opposed Confederate interference with the Texas economy. After the war he returned to Texas and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in both the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth congresses but was denied his seat by the Radical Republican majority. He returned to Huntsville and helped to incorporate the Central Transit Company in 1866. Branch practiced law until his death during a yellow fever epidemic, on October 3, 1867. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery near the grave of Sam Houston. Source


Oakwood Cemetery
Huntsville

COORDINATES

30° 43.604, -095° 32.831

Benjamin Rice Brigham (?-1836)

    Asa and Elizabeth Brigham, Benjamin arrived in Texas from Louisiana in April 1830, with his parents and brother Samuel. They made their home in Brazoria Municipality as a part of Austin's Third Colony on November 30, 1830. In early 1836, he enlisted as an orderly sergeant in Captain Robert J. Calder's Company of Brazoria Volunteers. Benjamin Brigham was mortally wounded at the Battle of San Jacinto, dying on the night of April 22nd.

Note: In 1881, a decision was made to place permanent memorials at the graves of those men who had been killed in the Battle of San Jacinto and buried on the battlefield. It was discovered, however, that all of the original wooden grave markers, except for Benjamin Brigham's, had rotted away and no one could remember exactly where the others rested. As a compromise, since the soldiers had been buried closely together, it was decided to place a cenotaph over Brigham's grave as a memorial to all of them.

San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site
La Porte

COORDINATES

29° 45.232, -095° 05.363

Gustav Schleicher (1823-1879)

    Gustav (Gustave, Gustavus) Schleicher, engineer, entrepreneur, and politician, son of a cabinetmaker, was born in Darmstadt, Hesse, on November 19, 1823. After completing secondary school there, he studied engineering and architecture at the University of Giessen and worked as a civil engineer assisting in railroad construction in Germany. He and Dr. Ferdinand L. Herff were among the leaders in a group of intellectuals who immigrated to Texas and founded a commune, named Bettina after the German literary figure and social visionary Bettina von Arnim, on the banks of the Llano River in 1847. The community was intended to prove the truth of communist ideals and light the way for relief of the troubles in Europe, which had led to sporadic attempts at revolution and were later to lead to the abortive revolt of 1848. Bettina had "friendship, freedom, equality" as its motto and "no regular scheme of government." Schleicher soon became disillusioned at this experiment in communism, however, for he learned that "the bigger the men, the more they talked, the less they worked and the more they ate," and by the time the settlement failed (within a year) he had made contacts with the other German settlers of the area. Schleicher operated a shingle mill he had started constructing shortly after his arrival at Huaco Springs, near New Braunfels, and began, as a surveyor, to help German settlers locate land and to acquire land himself. In 1850 he moved to San Antonio, where he and others initiated the Guadalupe Bridge Company to build a toll bridge across the Guadalupe between San Antonio and New Braunfels, as well as the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway. Together with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and others he began to build a railroad from Port Lavaca to San Antonio. He was also co-owner of a restaurant in San Antonio and a member of various social organizations such as the Texas State Sängerbund. He was a large man and loved to dance. He became an American citizen on December 8, 1852.

    In 1853-54 he served in the House of Representatives of the Fifth Texas Legislature. Between 1854 and 1861 he was surveyor of the Bexar Land District, which included most of the area from San Antonio to El Paso, and during his tenure he acquired title to large tracts of land, primarily on the Edwards Plateau. Beginning in 1858, he and his brother-in-law, Heinrich Dresel, published the Texas Staats-Zeitung in San Antonio. Schleicher was a cofounder of the San Antonio Water Company in 1858 and of Alamo College in 1860. From 1859 to 1861 he served in the Senate of the Eighth Texas Legislature. Although Schleicher allied himself with Democrats such as Andrew J. Hamilton and with Sam Houston in supporting the Union before the Civil War, after secession his contemporaries could see in him "an emphatic advocate of the right and justice of the Secession movement." He became a captain in the Confederate Army, in charge of Gen. John B. Magruder's corps of engineers. He tried and failed to recruit a company of fellow Germans for Sibley's Brigade, and on several occasions he served, rather equivocally, as a character witness for German Texans on trial for sedition. After the war he practiced law in San Antonio, and in 1866 he was one of the incorporators of the Columbus, San Antonio and Rio Grande Railroad. He served as engineer for the construction of the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway from Indianola to Cuero, founded the latter town as a way station and moved to it soon afterward, in 1872. Though he did not solicit the nomination, in 1874 he was nominated by the Democratic party and elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Sixth District.

    His first act as a congressman was installation of an elevator in the House, but he soon became known for his careful research and well-considered opinions on the reestablishment of the gold and silver standard and his support of protection for the Texas frontier with Mexico. He was a member of the committees on Indian Affairs and Railroads and Canals; in his second term he was also appointed to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His activities in support of a stable currency gained him a challenger within his own party, John Ireland, and Schleicher had to wage a bitter campaign before being nominated and re-elected in 1878. He had not taken office again, however, when he died in Washington, D.C., on January 10, 1879. In 1887 Elisabet Ney sculpted a bust of Schleicher, which was accidentally destroyed at the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Museum in Austin sometime in the 1950s. Schleicher was a conservative, and indeed he maintained that the German immigrants as a group were typically conservative; he remarked with reference to his opposition to abolition that when a German emigrates he selects a new country where he is satisfied "with things as they exist." The social experiment of Bettina taught Schleicher that the "crazy doctrines of communism...would destroy the individual, intelligent, free and untrammeled production...and substitute a government, moving and directing everything, in which all individual life would be merged." He was apparently a genuinely popular figure in Washington. In 1856 he married Elizabeth Tinsley Howard; they had seven children. He was buried with great pomp and ceremony in the National Cemetery in San Antonio. Schleicher County in West Texas was subsequently named for him. Source

COORDINATES

29° 25.295, -098° 28.000

Section A
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

Charles Stewart (1836-1895)

    Charles Stewart, legislator and congressman, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 30, 1836, the son of Charles and Martha (Moore) Stewart. In 1845 the family moved to Galveston, where Stewart began the study of law in 1852 with James W. Henderson of Houston and later pursued his studies with the Galveston firm of which William Pitt Ballinger was a member. Stewart was admitted to the bar in 1854, before his eighteenth birthday, and began the practice of law in Marlin. In 1856 and again in 1858 he was elected prosecuting attorney for the Thirteenth Judicial District. In Marlin he also practiced law in partnership with Thomas P. Aycock from 1857 to 1866. In 1860 Stewart married Rachel Barry of Marlin. That year he reported owning $15,000 in real property and $4,425 in personal property, including four slaves. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Secession Convention, where he and Alfred Marmaduke Hobby were the two youngest delegates.

    Stewart enlisted in the Confederate Army and served throughout the Civil War, first in the Tenth Regiment of Texas Infantry and later in George Wythe Baylor's cavalry. In 1866 Stewart moved to Houston, where he practiced law with D.U. Barziza (1866?-74), J.B. Likens (1874-78), and G.H. Breaker (1878-?). Stewart gained recognition as both a civil and a criminal attorney. An important part of his civil practice involved land litigation and suits against railroads. He served as Houston city attorney from 1874 to 1876. In 1878 he was elected to the Texas Senate, where he was an advocate of tax-supported public education. After one term in the Senate (1879-72), Stewart was elected as a Democrat to the United States Congress, where he served five terms (1883-93). In Washington, Stewart was a member of the Committee on Rivers and Harbors and worked for increased appropriations for harbor improvements on the Texas coast. He also advocated securing a railroad link between the United States and Argentina in order to increase United States exports to Central and South America. Stewart belonged to various Masonic bodies and in 1883 served as grand master of Masons in Texas. In 1892 he declined to run for office again. He returned to Houston, where he practiced law with his son, John S. Stewart. After several years of failing health, Stewart died of phthisis and diabetes in Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio on September 21, 1895, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, Houston. His son, who was city attorney at the time of Stewart's death, was his only surviving child. Source

Section C-3
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES
29° 45.918, -095° 23.193

Benjamin Johnson (1815-1872)

    Benjamin Johnson, soldier, early settler, and son of Moses Johnson and Mary Ann Roberts was born on June 8, 1815, near Edgerly (in present-day Calcasieu Parish), Louisiana. He moved to Texas in 1832 and settled at Jefferson Municipality (present-day Bridge City in Orange County) on Cow Bayou. Johnson volunteered to fight in the Texas Revolution and enlisted in the Texas Army on November 12, 1835, under Capt. Willis H. Landrum’s Company. He participated in the Grass Fight and the siege of Bexar later that year. Johnson was given an honorable discharge on January 1, 1836, at the Alamo. After learning of the fall of the Alamo, he re-enlisted in Capt. James Gillaspie’s Company, in the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers under Col. Sidney Sherman’s command. On April 21, Sherman formed part of the regiment of the left wing and fought in the battle of San Jacinto. On June 30, Johnson served a third enlistment as second sergeant in Capt. John G. W. Pierson’s Company at Washington. He received an honorable discharge on September 30, 1836. After service, Johnson received a donation of 320 acres of land for having served in the army. He returned to Jefferson, where on January 24, 1838, he received a 1,440-acre headright from the Jefferson County Board of Land Commissioners.

    On April 24, 1838, Johnson married Rachel Garner, daughter of Bradley Garner, Sr., and Sarah Rachel Harmon. Rachel was from a family of military service. Her father fought in the Battle of New Orleans, and her brothers David, Isaac, and Jacob Garner fought at the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar. Her brother-in-law Claiborne West was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Soon after marriage Johnson and his new wife settled in Sabine Pass on a farm of his sister-in-law Sarah Garner McGaffey. Records show that Benjamin and Rachel Johnson were one of the earliest settlers in Sabine Pass along with John McGaffey, Thomas Courts, and Jacob Garner. Johnson then appeared before the land commissioners and received an additional headright of 3,000 acres, granted to married men. He and Rachel became the parents of at least eight sons and two daughters. On July 7, 1838, Johnson was granted an additional 640 acres of donation land for having fought at the battle of San Jacinto. That same year, he was certified as one of fifty-seven jurors to serve in the Jefferson County courts. He was elected a county commissioner on December 2, 1852. He and his family were charter members of the second Baptist Church of Jefferson County. Rachel Johnson died in 1856. On July 4, 1861, Johnson married Matilda Myers, whom he had employed as his housekeeper. Later that year in August, Benjamin Johnson joined his three sons, Bradley, John, and Uriah Johnson, and served under Ben McCulloch in the Confederate Army. In addition to his military and public service, Johnson was a farmer, stockman, and patriarch. Benjamin Johnson died at the age of fifty-seven at Sabine Pass on October 13, 1872, and was buried at the Johnson family plot at the Sabine Pass Cemetery in Jefferson County. A Texas Historical Marker was erected in his honor in 1972. Source 


Sabine Pass Cemetery
Sabine Pass

COORDINATES

29° 43.108, -093° 54.319

Samuel Bronson Cooper (1850-1918)

    Samuel Bronson Cooper, politician, son of Rev. A. H. and Elizabeth Cooper, was born in Caldwell County, Kentucky, on May 30, 1850. The family moved to Texas in 1850, and the elder Bronson, a Methodist minister, died in 1853. Samuel was raised by an uncle and worked on a farm as a boy. He was admitted to the bar in 1872. He married Phoebe Young on October 15, 1873. He was elected county attorney of Tyler County in 1876 and again in 1878. He also helped in the early educational efforts of John Henry Kirby. Cooper served two terms in the state Senate, from 1880 to 1884, and was president pro tem during his second term. He wrote a bill granting each Confederate veteran 1,280 acres of state land. In 1885 President Grover Cleveland named him collector of internal revenue at Galveston, a position he held until 1888. 

    Cooper ran unsuccessfully for district judge in 1889 but was elected in the Second Texas District to the first of six consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives in 1892. He was defeated by Moses L. Broocks in 1904 but came back to beat Broocks in 1906 for a position in the Sixtieth Congress, only to lose to Martin Dies in the 1908 race. While a member of the Congress, Cooper served on the House Ways and Means Committee. He helped secure $600,000 in federal appropriations to link Beaumont with the Port Arthur ship channel. With Cooper's support, a nine-foot-deep channel was dug in 1908; later improvements tied Beaumont to the Sabine-Neches Waterway and made the city a deepwater port. Cooper was chairman of the Texas delegation to the Democratic convention in Kansas City (1904). In 1910 President William Howard Taft appointed him to the Board of General Appraisers, a customs court that sat at New York. Cooper was affiliated with the Masonic lodge, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He died in New York on August 21, 1918, after a short illness. His funeral and burial were in Beaumont. He was survived by four of his five children, his wife having died in 1911. One of his daughters, William (Willie) Chapman Cooper, married William P. Hobby, and another married S. W. Sholars, congressman from Tyler County. Source 


Magnolia Cemetery
Beaumont

COORDINATES

30° 06.146, -094° 06.107

Shadrack Edmond "Shad" Graham (1896-1969)

    Shad Graham, filmmaker, was born in New York City on April 24, 1896, the son of Charles Edmond and Edith (Craske) Graham. His father and uncle (Robert E. Graham) were professional actors, and his mother was a well-known ballerina. Shad Graham began his association with the film industry as a child actor in The Great Train Robbery (1903), but his main interest through the years was in the technical phase of the new art form. He spent fifty years with major motion-picture companies in New York and Hollywood and later with his own company, Shad E. Graham Productions. His Our Home Town series, documentaries of small towns in many parts of the United States, especially in Texas, is of historical significance for the period following World War II. Graham moved after the war to Houston, where he continued making documentary films while serving as Texas representative for Twentieth Century Fox Movietone News. His Texas City Disaster 1947 won awards for that studio and focused international attention on disaster needs. Graham was a charter member of the Film Editors of New York City and Hollywood and a gold-card member of the Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation. He was first married to Helen May in New York City on January 11, 1920; they had two children, and they were divorced in 1927. His second marriage was to Ruth Esther McLain of Houston on July 17, 1947, in New York City; they lived in Missouri City, Texas. Graham died on January 28, 1969, in Houston and was buried there. His documentary films were donated to the University of Texas at Austin, where the Shad E. Graham Memorial Student Film Fund and Memorial Film Library were established in 1969. Source

Abbey Mausoleum
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 43.340, -095° 18.226

John Milton Swisher (1819-1891)

    John Milton Swisher, soldier, civil servant, and financier, was born on May 31, 1819, near Franklin in Williamson County, Tennessee, the son of Elizabeth (Boyd) and James Gibson Swisher. In 1833 he immigrated to Texas with his parents, who settled first in Milam Municipality. At age fourteen Swisher opened a school - what he referred to as an "ABC class" - at Tenoxtitlán, but quickly abandoned it to take up farming. The family remained at Tenoxtitlán from January until October 1834 and then, harassed by Indians, moved to Gay Hill in what is now Washington County. After learning of William B. Travis's appeal for assistance at the Alamo, Swisher and ten or twelve companions started on March 1, 1836, for San Antonio. They halted at Gonzales on March 5 and there, after Sam Houston arrived on March 10 to organize the army, became the core of Capt. William W. Hill's Company H of Col. Edward Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers. Harvey H. Swisher, John's uncle, was first lieutenant of the company. 

    After taking part in the battle of San Jacinto, Swisher was discharged on May 30 at Victoria. Thereafter he clerked for a time in his father's Washington County store. By December 1836 he was working as recording clerk of the treasury department and in 1840 was promoted to chief clerk. In 1841 he was appointed a first lieutenant in the Republic of Texas Marine Corps, but resigned after a cruise to the Yucatán under Commodore Edwin W. Moore. Swisher served as chief clerk of the auditor's office at Washington-on-the-Brazos, as clerk of the Ninth Congress of the Republic of Texas, and as clerk of the Convention of 1845. In 1846 he was elected colonel of the first regiment of Thomas Green's brigade of Texas militia, and in January 1847 he raised a company of rangers for service in the Mexican War, but got no farther than San Antonio before the United States victory at Buena Vista made the company unnecessary. His younger brother, James Monroe Swisher, served as a private in Capt. Benjamin McCulloch's company of Col. John C. Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen. 

    In 1848 Swisher was appointed auditor of public accounts, and in 1852 he became a banker in Austin. On January 23, 1860, Governor Sam Houston appointed him paymaster of the Texas Rangers, a position he held until Texas seceded from the Union. Swisher was an ardent unionist, but after secession became an accomplished fact he threw his support behind the Confederacy. In 1862 he was sent to London to exchange Texas securities for war materials but was frustrated when the state's United States bonds were declared non-negotiable. On promise of exchange for Texas cotton, he then ordered supplies delivered to Matamoros, but when he returned to Texas he was dismissed from his post on charges of unionist sympathies. Swisher nevertheless spent the remainder of the war in Matamoros as purchasing agent for Col. John S. Ford's Confederate forces. From 1865 until 1868 he ran a banking and commission house in Galveston. Then, after returning to Austin, he organized and until 1870 served as president of a stock company for the construction of the city's street-railway system. Swisher married Maria W. Sims, a native of Virginia, at Washington-on-the-Brazos on May 28, 1844; they had two children. Maria died on April 13, 1870, and Swisher married Helen "Nellie" A. Nickerson, a teacher at Medina, on January 1, 1873; they had two daughters. After Nellie's death in March 1875 Swisher married Bella French in Austin in October 1878. Swisher died on March 11, 1891, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin. He was a Mason. His reminiscences of early Texas and the battle of San Jacinto are preserved in the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, and were published in a truncated version as Swisher's Memoirs by Mary R. Maverick Green in 1932. Source

Section 1
Oakwood Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 16.552, -097° 43.646

James Shannon Mayfield (1808-1852)

    James S. Mayfield, lawyer, legislator, and soldier, was born in Williamson County, Tennessee on November 1, 1808, to John and Polly (Martin) Mayfield.  James Shannon married Sophia Ann Crutcher on July 10, 1833, and the following year the family relocated to Jackson County, Illinois. Between 1834 and 1871 the Mayfield family expanded to include seven children. In 1837 Mayfield arrived in Nacogdoches County, Texas, where he joined the military to combat incursions from Native Americans and began practicing law in Nacogdoches with Joseph M. White. In 1839 he accompanied Albert Sidney Johnston, David Burnet, I. W. Burton, and Thomas J. Rusk as a commission to propose to the Cherokee Indians that they leave Texas upon payment for their improvements by the republic. The Cherokee refused the offer on July 16, 1839, which resulted in hostilities with the military.  Mayfield participated in the ensuing battles as aide-de-camp for Brigadier General K. H. Douglas and authored field reports for Johnston. Mayfield represented Nacogdoches County in the Fifth and Sixth congresses (1840-42) and introduced the Franco-Texian Bill. From February 8, 1841, to September 7, 1841, Mayfield served as secretary of state under Mirabeau B. Lamar, except for the period from April 30 to September 7, when Joseph Waples and Samuel A. Roberts served consecutively in his place. On October 28, 1841, Mayfield relocated his family to La Grange in Fayette County, where he continued to practice law.

    During a speech in the Texas House of Representatives on January 4, 1842, Mayfield disparaged fellow congressman David S. Kaufman. The two men exchanged gunfire and Kaufman ultimately died from a wound to the abdomen, but the encounter was considered a fair fight and Mayfield did not face charges. On September 16, 1842, Mayfield assembled a company of fifty-three volunteers from La Grange, to follow Capt. Nicholas Dawson in an attempt to repel Gen. Adrián Woll's Mexican army from San Antonio. His group, joined by others under the command of Jesse Billingsley and W. J. Wallace, arrived at the scene of the Dawson massacre on Salado Creek while it was occurring. Mayfield, as the commanding officer, determined that his group was too far outnumbered and remained in the distance until the following day, when he joined the command of Mathew Caldwell. Mayfield commanded one of the battalions but opposed pursuing Woll further south due to overwhelming force and the inevitable arrival of Mexican reinforcements.

    In 1842 Mayfield was a member of the Somervell expedition but did not join the subsequent Mier expedition. Congressman Robert Potter died in 1842 and bequeathed one-third of his estate to Sophia as well as his favorite horse “Shakespeare” to James. In 1843 he presented himself as a candidate for major general of the Texas army but removed himself from consideration because, he said, of ill health. It is probable, however, that accusations of cowardice during the Woll invasion leveled by Mathew Caldwell and Edward Burleson had much to do with his decision. Mayfield represented Fayette County at the Convention of 1845 and in September challenged Burleson to a duel but did not go through with the engagement. In 1846 Mayfield served as an inspector of the La Grange Female Institute and in April he helped organize the Democratic party in Texas. On July 28, 1849, he killed Absolom Bostwick in self-defense during a political argument regarding the special election of the sheriff.  Bostwick’s death led to the discovery of an organized gang of thieves operating from Missouri to the Rio Grande. In July 1850 Mayfield was one of a committee appointed in a meeting at La Grange to consider insurrectionary movements in Santa Fe County. Sophia died in La Grange on March 2, 1852 and James passed away later that year on December 3. The Mayfields were buried in the front yard of their home in La Grange, but relocated to the La Grange Cemetery in 1858. On March 6, 2004, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas held a dedication ceremony to adorn the grave with a bronze medallion identifying Mayfield as a “Defender of the Republic of Texas.” Source


Old La Grange City Cemetery
La Grange

COORDINATES

29° 54.643, -096° 52.109

John Woods Harris (1810-1887)

    John Woods Harris, Texas legislator, attorney, and special counsel to the United States Supreme Court, was born in 1810 and reared in Nelson County, Virginia. He attended Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) for two years and in 1831 entered the University of Virginia, where he remained for five years and graduated in six departments, including law. In the fall of 1837 he came to Texas and settled near the mouth of the Brazos River in Brazoria County. By January 1, 1838, he was practicing law in partnership with John A. Wharton and Elisha M. Pease. After Wharton's death in 1839, Harris and Pease continued the partnership, and their firm, which continued until the election of Pease to the governorship in 1853, was one of the most noteworthy in Texas. When Harris became a member of the Texas bar, the republic comprised only four judicial districts. He and Pease divided the work of their office for the sake of greater efficiency and for their own convenience; Pease remained permanently at Brazoria, while Harris attended the courts of the six counties composing their district. In this way the firm was able to practice in all of the most important cases that came before the courts and before the Supreme Court of Texas as soon as it was organized in 1840.

    In 1839 Harris was elected to represent Brazoria County in the House of Representatives of the Fourth Congress, where he introduced a bill providing for the abolition of the civil, or Mexican, law and the adoption of common law as the law of the land. The bill passed despite considerable opposition on the ground that common law was not sufficiently liberal in its provisions regarding the rights of married women. This feature was incorporated five years later in the Constitution of 1945. Harris was appointed the first Texas state attorney general by James Pinckney Henderson in 1846 and reappointed by George T. Wood, but he resigned on October 30, 1849. He was subsequently employed as a special counsel to represent the state's interests in the United States Supreme Court in matters involving land certificates issued by the Republic of Texas and suits or actions involving the constitutionality of the republic's revenue laws. In 1854 Governor Pease appointed him to a committee of three to revise the laws of the state. Although Harris was a staunch Democrat he disapproved of secession and regarded the Civil War as entirely unnecessary. Nevertheless, he was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause. After the Civil War he moved to Galveston and resumed his law practice in partnership with Marcus F. Mott and later with Branch T. Masterson. In 1874-75 Harris represented Matagorda, Galveston, and Brazoria counties in the Texas House of Representatives. He married Mrs. Annie Pleasants Dallam, the only daughter of Samuel Rhoads Fisher, in 1852 and later adopted her daughter. The couple had four children. Harris continued to practice law until his death, on April 1, 1887, at home in Galveston. Source


Trinity Episcopal Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.588, -094° 48.721

Francis Richard Lubbock (1815-1905)

    Francis R. Lubbock, governor of Texas, was born on October 16, 1815, in Beaufort, South Carolina, the oldest son of Dr. Henry Thomas Willis and Susan Ann (Saltus) Lubbock and brother of Thomas S. Lubbock. At age fourteen, after his father's death, he quit school and took a job as a clerk in a hardware store. He later pursued a business career in South Carolina and then in New Orleans, and continued his business activities when he moved to Texas in 1836. He was married three times-first to Adele Baron of New Orleans in 1835; then to Mrs. Sarah E. Black Porter, the widow of a Presbyterian minister, in 1883; and then, after his second wife's death, to Lou Scott in 1903. In 1837 Lubbock moved to Houston, Texas, where he opened a general store. During the 1840s he began his ranching operations. Lubbock was a lifelong Democrat. He began his association with the Democratic party during the nullification crisis in South Carolina in 1832. In Texas he continued his political involvement and was appointed comptroller of the Republic of Texas by President Sam Houston. He was also elected clerk of the Harris County district court and served from 1841 to 1857. In the 1850s Lubbock was active in state Democratic politics. In the party convention of 1856 he fought against the American (or Know-Nothing) party. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1857 but lost his race for reelection in 1859, when Sam Houston and Edward Clark were elected.

    In 1860 Lubbock served as a Texas delegate to the national Democratic convention at Charleston, where the southern delegation walked out in opposition to the Democratic platform and Stephen A. Douglas, the party's nominee. After the southerners' second walkout on the Democrats at Baltimore, the southern Democratic party nominated John C. Breckinridge at their convention in Richmond, Virginia, a convention chaired by Lubbock. In 1861 Lubbock won the governorship of Texas by only 124 votes. As governor he staunchly supported the Confederacy and worked to improve the military capabilities of Texas. He chaired the state military board, which attempted to trade cotton and United States Indemnity Bonds for military goods through Mexico. He also worked with the board to establish a state foundry and percussion-cap factory. Lubbock vigorously supported Confederate conscription, opposing draft exemptions for able-bodied men as unfair and the substitution system as advantageous to the wealthy. Viewing the use of whites in government contracting and cattle driving as wasteful, he encouraged their replacement with slaves to increase enlistment. Aliens residing in Texas were also made subject to the draft. Lubbock exempted frontier counties from the Confederate draft and enlisted their residents for local defense against Indian attack.

    When his term of office ended, Lubbock chose to enter the military service. He was appointed lieutenant colonel and served as assistant adjutant general on the staff of Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder. He organized troop-transport and supply trains for the Red River campaign against Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. Lubbock was later transferred to the staff of Brig. Gen. Thomas Green. After Green's death, Lubbock's commander was Maj. Gen. John A. Wharton, whom Lubbock assisted in raising additional Texas troops for the Red River operations. In August 1864 Lubbock was appointed aide-de-camp to Jefferson Davis and traveled to Richmond. As an expert on the Trans-Mississippi Department, he provided Davis with firsthand information on the war west of the Mississippi River. At the end of the war Lubbock fled Richmond with Davis and was captured by federal authorities in Georgia. He was imprisoned in Fort Delaware and kept in solitary confinement for eight months before being paroled. After his release he returned to Texas. He soon tired of ranching and went into business in Houston and Galveston, where he served as tax collector. From 1878 to 1891 he was treasurer of the state of Texas. From 1891 until his death he continued to live in Austin, where he died on June 22, 1905. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.913, -097° 43.618

Thomas August Graves (?-1861)

    Graves came to Texas in 1831 as part of Robertson's Colony (located in present-day Milam County) and worked as a surveyor while waiting for his application for citizenship and land to be approved. Four years later, he finally received his title to one-fourth of a league of land on November 10, 1835. On January 14, 1836, he enlisted in Captain Sterling C. Robertson's Company of Rangers, but the company shortly afterward disbanded. He re-enlisted April 8, 1836 as a member of Captain Jesse Billingsley's Company of Mina Volunteers and was with them at the Battle of San Jacinto. His enlistment ended on July 8, 1836, and he returned to his estate. He married in April 1837, and later that year was elected the first County Surveyor of Milam County. Several years later, for his service in the Texas army and for fighting at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was granted an additional three-fourths of a league and one labor of land near his homestead in Milam County. Graves died in Washington County in 1861 and was buried in the cemetery in Independence.

Note: Graves' burial site is unmarked and its exact location has been lost, but it is likely he is buried somewhere in the photo below where the majority of those who died in 1860-1864 rest.


Old Independence Cemetery
Independence

COORDINATES

N/A

Cleveland T. "Big Cat" Williams (1933-1999)

    Georgia native Cleveland Williams was an American heavyweight boxer who fought in the 1950s through the 1970s. A Ring Magazine poll once rated him as one of the finest boxers never to win a title. He made an imposing figure, tall with an impressive athletic broad shouldered build. Williams turned professional in 1951 and fought many of the best heavyweights of his era. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the 6 ft 3 in Williams was a top-rated heavyweight. His quest to obtain a title fight, however, was consistently derailed. First he was knocked out by Liston on April 15, 1959, after hurting Liston early and breaking Liston's nose (Liston often said Williams was the hardest puncher he ever fought). Williams recovered from the Liston fight to score more wins, but was again stopped by Liston in two rounds in their rematch on March 21, 1960. His quest for the title was again stalled when he was held to a draw by Eddie Machen on July 10, 1962 and when he dropped a split decision on March 13, 1963 to Ernie Terrell, a fighter he had previously knocked out in seven rounds in 1962. 

    On November 29, 1964, during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, a car driven by Williams was stopped near Houston, Texas, by highway patrolman Dale Witten, who stated afterwards Williams was speeding. According to the police report subsequently filed by the patrolman, Williams resisted arrest, and the officer's .357 magnum revolver went off during the struggle to arrest him. The bullet moved across his intestines, and lodged against his right hip. He ultimately had to undergo four operations in the next seven months for colon damage and an injured right kidney. The right kidney of Williams was too damaged and not working, and had to be removed in June 1965. Doctors could not take out the patrolman's bullet, which had broken his right hip joint and caused partial paralysis of some of Williams' hip muscles. He was fined $50 and briefly jailed after pleading no contest to charges arising from the incident.

    Williams was inactive the entire year of 1965 while recovering from his injuries. The injury, surgeries and subsequent convalescence caused Williams to lose over 60 pounds, and over 17 months of his career. He regained his weight and strength by tossing 80-pound bales of hay daily on a cattle ranch until he had regained his fighting weight and physique. On February 8, 1966, Williams got a standing ovation from Houston fans as he returned to the ring, and knocked out Ben Black in the first round. It was in this condition that Williams fought for the heavyweight championship against Muhammad Ali on November 14, 1966 at the Astrodome. He lasted until the third round. He retired from boxing after the Ali bout, but later made a comeback. Although able to defeat journeymen fighters, he suffered several knockout losses before retiring for good in 1972. Williams finished his career with a record of 78 wins (58 KOs), 13 losses and 1 draw. He worked as a forklift operator and other odd jobs through the 1980s. On September 3, 1999, he was tragically killed in an unsolved hit-and-run accident. Four years later, Ring Magazine ranked him 49th on their list of the 100 greatest punchers of all time.

Note: Cleveland Williams' grave is presently unmarked. He is buried in the bottom left space of the White family plot. There is no mention of his name on the headstone.

Block 12A
Paradise North Cemetery
Houston

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29° 53.419, -095° 27.580